Episode #646

Recover, Rebuild, Didion

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Kurt Andersen talks with writer Simon Winchester about how cities recover from disaster. They’ll discuss the earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco in 1906, and how the city rebuilt. We’ll look at the cultural life of Sarajevo, ten years after the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War. And we’ll talk about New Orleans musicians leaving the city — today, and one hundred years ago, when a race riot changed American music forever. Plus, Kurt talks with the author Joan Didion.

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Kurt Andersen talks with journalist, historian, and geologist Simon Winchester about disasters — why they happen and what happens afterward. They’ll look at the aftermath of the earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco 99 years ago. Winchester explains why he thinks New Orleans should not be rebuilt ...

At the turn of the 20th century, New Orleans was one of the few places in America where people of different races could play music together and live and work side by side. That delicate balance blew up in 1900, when the city’s native-born Whites, ethnic immigrants, Blacks, and Creoles ...

In the mid 1990s, Sarajevo was the most cosmopolitan city in the Balkans, when it came under siege. It endured nearly four years of constant shelling and sniping. Yet amid the turmoil, Sarajevo thrived as a cultural hot spot. Today, ten years after the Dayton Accords ended the war, much ...

Luke DuBois is a musician and computer programmer who has spent the last couple of years developing a technique he calls time-lapse phonography. Much like the way financial analysts sample the stock market to determine prices, time-lapse phonography samples sound to create averages. DuBois used the technique to ...

Joan Didion is one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Her long essays — in a form of journalistic meditation unique to her — are the envy of any nonfiction writer. She has not been a memoirist, until now. Her new book, The Year of ...